EPISODES

Jose Maria Figueres is the President of the Carbon War Room, an organization that supports initiatives by private companies to reduce their carbon emissions. And before that he was the president of Costa Rica from 1994 - 1998. So he has led efforts to combat climate change from within both the public and private sectors. And apparently concern for the environment runs in the family, because his sister is none other than the executive secretary of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres - the top UN authority on global climate change who played a critical role in the COP 21 talks in Paris.

While in Paris for those UN climate negotiations, we had the chance to catch up with Jose Maria Figueres for the podcast. We talked about why he sees transforming our economies to a low-carbon future as an opportunity to combat other systemic issues such as inequality and poverty, the dynamics between the public and private sector, and about Costa Rica's own ambitious efforts to become carbon neutral by 2021.

Listen to our interview with Figueres here, or subscribe to The Elephant in iTunes.